That is a very fragile idea of the nature of life and what it makes life worth living. Generations before us saw it in every different terms. Instead of the question of what was not worth dying for, they began with what was worth dying for. If it was good and right and true, then its value was defined precisely by the willingness of the person to do for it. This was proven on countless battlefields in Europe and innumerable beaches in the Pacific. Rows of crosses and white monuments laid out in lush green cemeteries across the world testify to what was worth dying for. Today we have turned around completely and insist that life is defined not by what we are willing to die for but what is worth living for.
As a culture, we seem willing to surrender rights for which our forefathers died in pursuit of personal safety and security. We are willing to purge the public square of the Christian faith that informed and helped to define us a nation once. We are willing to shut down the nation to protect one life while keeping the doors open on businesses whose only work is killing the unborn. Who we are is being defined not by the rights we once fought to preserve but the rights we are willing to give up for things we value more than liberty.
There are no seeds willing to be planted in the ground of death for any cause. It is no wonder that we have trouble understanding the willingness of Jesus to die for sinners unworthy of His sacrifice. St. Paul's statement has become almost laughable. No one is willing to give up anything for anyone -- no matter how righteous -- and certainly not at the cost of his or her life.
We live in a time in which our past is being characterized only by our sins and not by our accomplishments, when we squander our liberty on self-expression and personal preference, when we look to government for solutions that can only come through personal responsibility and accountability, and when we give to others the right to determine whose voice will be heard and whose voice will not be tolerated. It is a hard day for a Church that preaches repentance, ownership of sin's guilt and shame, as the path to forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. At best, liberal Christianity can only mimic the voices of those around them, forsaking the Gospel of the cross and empty tomb for a feel better approach to our sins.
Where once our sinful thoughts and desires were challenged by God, new age Christianity insists it is better to be true to them and to your sinful self than to be true to God or there is no God worth having unless He (or whatever pronoun God chooses to use) is willing to accept, condone, and approve of those sins. The only redemption we seem willing to hear is the one which accepts who we are and judges it good enough and so the voice of orthodox Christianity is increasingly judged as hate speech not to be allowed anymore.
While all of this might be expected in a world spinning out of control in its death spiral, who would have thought that there would be this debate going on in Rome or in the confessional communions who once stood firmly on what they believed, taught, and confessed? This is the terrible state of affairs. Rome has on Peter's stool a man who seems unable to speak coherently except when he confuses the truth his church has said his office exists to guarantee. Those who claim Luther seem intent upon distancing themselves from nearly everything Luther every wrote or said about the Gospel. Those who once looked to Geneva seem to fall all over themselves as they flee from the things Calvin once thought incontrovertible. Within Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Protestantism, the number of faithful adherents and attenders continues to decline as some of their most visible teachers and preachers seem unable to give amen to what even the most basic creeds confess.
Is it worth dying for? If it is not worthy dying for the Gospel, then is it worth living at all? Jaroslav Pelikan once said “if Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” It is not our affluence or pleasures that make our lives worth living, but the very thing worth dying for that makes living something wonderful. Jesus told us this when He invited us not to enjoy a life of ease at His expense but to lives of cross bearing, suffering, and even death -- like Him. These are not things we should avoid at all costs but these things end up giving meaning to the lives we live.
2 comments:
NOW: "One of the things we have learned from the pandemic are those things we have decided are not worth dying for -- sports events, work, education, movies, and, yes, church. By and large, by our willingness to accept restrictions on these and other things, we acquiesced to the idea that these may be good and valuable but not good enough or valuable enough to risk our lives for." - Rev. Peters
THEN: "We are encouraging our pastors and people to follow civil authorities according to the Fourth Commandment (i.e., honoring parents and other authorities), and they are doing so according to St. Paul’s direction in Romans 13.
"We don’t view this as a matter of restriction of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” rights. That would be a different matter. We do not believe that the government is trying to limit religion in such an instance. Instead, we view this limitation of church services more as a duty and opportunity to act for the benefit of our fellow citizens, especially those most vulnerable (“love your neighbor as yourself,” Mark 12:31)." - President Harrison.
The comments by me and Pres. Harrison are not directed at the same point. While I would agree that many if not most of the restrictions placed by the government were not aimed particularly at churches in an attempt to infringe upon the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, I would also say that the willingness of our people and our pastors to presume that worship was not worth the risk constitutes a different threat. The threat from the government upon our right is a different threat from a willing Christianity that worship is good enough but not worth dying for. That this has application to the pandemic is obvious but it also has application for any future threat that may come along in which we may be asked to sacrifice something for the sake of what we believe. Pandemics may come and go but the press for politically correct speech and the label hate speech may see us either constrained in the future or threatened. What will we do then?
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